


Gesóþian

by LauramourFromOz



Series: Star Trek: All Stars [2]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Archaeologists Make Everything Better, Archaeology, Before Picard Was A Captain He Was An Archaeologist, Everything is Going to be Ok, Gen, I May Be A Tiny Bit Hysterical, I’m a Queer Australian and I have A Lot of Feelings Today, Like ANZACs, Love Wins, Sort Of, We Did It Australia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-15
Updated: 2017-11-15
Packaged: 2019-02-02 22:36:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12735687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LauramourFromOz/pseuds/LauramourFromOz
Summary: The title is an Old-English verb (pronounced: Yesothan) which means: to bare witness.Captain Picard comes across an article written by an ancestor of his security officer about the experience of Australia’s SSM survey.***This takes place on the USS Matilda and not The Enterprise. Said Chief of Security is not Worf. See the Meta post in this series for details.***





	Gesóþian

**Author's Note:**

> I have a lot of emotions about the recent postal survey on Same Sex marriage in Australia. I honestly didn’t realise how much it was affecting me (I knew I was having the semester from hell but there were other contributing factors). 
> 
> Professor Clare smith is a real archaeologist (She’s the Dean of Research at my University and is the most recent outgoing president of the World Archaeological Congress) and my first Archaeology professor. She’s a wonderful human and a brilliant Archaeologist. The pretend article in this references her book: ‘Country, Kin and Culture: The Survival of an Australian Aboriginal Community’ which is currently out of print but fascinating and well worth a read if you can track down a copy.
> 
> Senator Penny Wong is also a real person who has led the movement for marriage equality (with others) in Australia since its inception.

_My first Archaeology Professor, Clare Smith,_ _instilled in me the importance of baring witness. So here I am baring witness to a chapter in history that should never have been allowed to happen. Nomatter how favorable the outcome was, nomatter how favorable the end result. Nomatter the ends. We must never forget what was done to us. So let this stand witness._

_-Jayne Eastick, 2018_

It was an old article Captain Jean-Luc Picard, of the USS MAtilda, had come across. He’d been consulting the bylines of his Chief of Security, and sometime Archaeologist, Commander Jayne Eastick. He knew her background, obviously, she’d been aboard for some time. He’d never managed to properly look at her academic back catalogue witch he’d promptly been distracted from when he came upon this article. She’d taken oral accounts of people’s experiences with a non-binding, voluntary postal survey on Same Sex Marriage. The centrepiece of the article was a conversation with a South Australian senator by the name of Penny Wong who had tirelessly led the charge for marriage equality for many years. Eastick had talked about seeing Wong’s reaction to the result and how deeply she’d identified with it.

Picard’s door chimed. And he was greeted by his chief of security. She was not on duty and thus out of uniform. She was dressed casually, in a t-shirt emblazoned with the words ‘TRUST ME I’M AN ARCHAEOLOGIST’ emblazoned across her chest. Picard idly recognised the t-shirt as Benny’s.

“You wanted to see me Captain?” She said.

“Yes,” he indicated for her to sit, “I came across an interesting article recently.”

“Captain?”

By way of explanation he handed her the PADD, Jayne recognised the article immediately and smiled.

“Ancestor of yours?”

“Yes actually.”

“What happened to her, did she get her happy ending?”

“Yea, she did. She was barely more than an undergrad when she wrote this, twenty-five years old. She was a member of a lose group of academics. They did the definitive Beowulf translation of the twenty-first century. It’s still quite widely used.  By the time she was thirty-five she’d done a PhD and was married to another member of the group. They had three children. She was also a fairly accomplished actor and novelist. She didn’t publish a lot solo but she collaborated on dozens of translations of Latin and Old-English. Her wife was the real academic. She published mostly for leisure, like me. She did teach a bit though, between fieldwork and acting jobs.”

“Sounds like a remarkable woman.”

“She was. I’d love to have met her, just once.”

_The cruelty and injustice of this survey has been akin to the systematic attempted genocide of the indigenous peoples of this country, it is an inconvenient smear on our national identity that can, all too easily be forgotten. So I stand witness to what was done to us._

_-Jayne Eastick, 2018_

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I realise that it is a bold claim to compare attempted genocide with the SSM postal survey but the fictional article draws parallels between the two and it is more (yes I have thought this through thoroughly and am considering writing it) a parallel between allowing two inconvenient truths to be forgotten as is a fascinating cultural phenomenon in Australia and is part of the reason I am considering actually writing the article.
> 
> Also: this was originally a two hander between Michael Burnham and Jayne but I still can’t get her quite right so I gave the scene to Picard instead.


End file.
